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Colorado environmental protection groups, charging that the experiment is dangerous, wasteful and unnecessary, have sued to stop it. The United. States Atomic Energy Commission and its private partner, the C.E.R. Geonuclear Corporation of Las Vegas, contend that it will probably be safe and that it is necessary to help solve the nation's energy crisis.

Three nuclear bombs with a total explosive force of 90,000 tons of T.N.T.—about five times more than the Hiroshima blast —were sealed last Thursday more than a mile below the Piceance Creek basin in Rio Blanco Cqunty, 175 miles west of Denver.

Stacked in a steel well casing at depths of 5,840, 6,230 and 6,690 feet, the bombs are to be detonated simultaneously to create a huge cavern and adjacent cracks into which gas can flow from surrounding sandstone for pumping out.

Projects of Plowshare

The $7.5‐million experiment is part of an A.E.C. program called Plowshare, established in 1957 to search for another use for nuclear explosives besides war. Its first major idea was to use nuclear bombs to make another Panama Canal—an idea abandoned as impractical and hazardous to health.

Underground “gas stimulation” experiments came next with two smaller, single‐bomb blasts—Project Gasbuggy, a 29kiloton detonation on Dec. 10, 1967, near Farmington, N. M., and Project Rulison, a 43kiloton explosion on Sept. 10, 1969, in Garfield County, Colo., about 15 miles south of the site of Thursday's experiment, called. Project Rio Blanco.

What worries many Colorado residents, including Gov. John A. Love, is that if Project Rio Blanco is successful, hundreds of similar blasts will follow.

“I can't personally imagine a time, a society, in which several hundred shots would be acceptable,” he said before reluctantly approving Thursday's blast—under White House pressure, his critics charge.

Actually, geologists have estimated that from 5,600 to 12,620 such nuclear detonations would be required to develop fully the deep natural gas fields under Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

To do that, critics argue, would seriously risk poisoning with radioactive debris the water supply of most of the western half of the United States in years and decades to come.

Corroded Casings Feared

One critic, David M. Evans, a geologist and natural gas specialist representing the Colorado Open Space Council, a coalition of 34 private state environmental protection groups, argues that not only will the gas pumped out be more radioactive than usual, but also that the radioactive wastes produced will eventually get into underground water and make their way into drinking water and into more valuable oil shale formations closer to the surface.

He cites a National Academy of Sciences report saying the wastes need to be isolated for from 600 to 1,000 years to be harmless to man.

But the steel casing containing the bombs will last only 25 years, he said, adding:

“When corroded casings begin to leak radioactive water, and poisonous springs erupt sometime during the next 1,000 years, who will clean up the mess? The answer is no one. Nothing man can do will keep the radioactivity out of the Colorado River. The damage will have been done, and it will be too late to do anything about it.”

The A.E.C. argues that it would not proceed unless safety was assured.

A lawsuit against the blast, filed by environment groups, charges that the Colorado Water Pollution Control Commission illegally issued a permit for it, not determining first whether it was safe.

An attorney for CER Geonuclear William Schoeberlein, said last week that no state permits were required anyway because the Federal Government had exclusive jurisdiction over nuclear matters. His company only applied for the state permit out of courtesy, he said.

Delays could cost up to $50,000 per day, an A.E.C. spokesman said. Regardless, he added, the bombs were sealed underground with concrete on Thursday and cannot be retrieved.